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It felt over before it even got started. But this myth didn't unravel in 90 high-profile television minutes. The myth of Armstrong had been eroding for years, as the truth began to close in on a once-irresistible saga.

This was an attempt at a knockout, leaked and expected, but still surreal in its execution. Oprah Winfrey was the national examiner here, and there would be no grace period of misty memories, no gradual build-up before the inquisition. She wanted to know the answers to the hard questions right away, and she wanted yes or no answers.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Finally, out loud, in public. Armstrong had been so defiant for so long—insistent that he'd never doped, never taken illegal advantage, never supplemented his performance or stamina with anything other than the astonishing heart and mind and constitution of Lance Armstrong. He denied it furiously, without blinking or equivocation, and he menaced many who suggested otherwise.

Now he was surrendering, for no reason other than he had no choice.

He appeared shrunken in that hotel room chair, aged, graying. The story of Armstrong had been always been so larger than life—the survivor turned champion turned cancer warrior and inspiration—and the man himself was never more vigorous than when he was cornered. Skepticism was like jet fuel, and he thrived on intimidation.

But sitting before Winfrey, Armstrong didn't look like a fighter. He looked like a man who wanted to go home, to go anywhere. There was almost a hopelessness to his presence, a daze, a going-through of motions he never expected to go through. He was appealing for a forgiveness he didn't seem to think he deserved.

"This is too late," he said. "It's too late for probably most people. And that is my fault."

He did not break down, he did not cry, he did not offer the emotional release that has become the necessary crescendo in the modern ritual of apology and redemption. He managed a smile here and there, some scatterings of rueful laughter. His jokes were mostly gallows humor or bad.

Timeline: A Giant's Fall

Decades of Doping

Photos: Armstrong's Cycling Career

Associated Press

After the Fall, Turning to TV

After a scandal, other athletes, politicians and celebs have turned to TV. Take a look back.

In 1995, British actor Hugh Grant was arrested in Los Angeles for solicitation of a prostitute. He addressed the scandal immediately and with humor, on 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.' Eric Draper/Associated Press

"I'm not the most believable guy in the world right now," he said at one point. He attempted some dutiful self-flagellation. When Winfrey showed a video of a young, obstinate Armstrong, he described himself as an "arrogant pr—."

Winfrey was prepared for a thorough inquiry, ready from the start to get into the dense weeds of the United States Anti-Doping Agency's Reasoned Decision and hold Armstrong accountable for his history of human collateral damage. She ticked-off names of truth-tellers, individuals who had felt Armstrong's life-changing fury. Frankie and Betsy Andreu. Emma O'Reilly. Tyler Hamilton. David Walsh. Floyd Landis.

Armstrong struggled here; the introduction of truthful adversaries seemed to rattle his focus, and some of his responses were grasping and awkward (his recollection of his recent call to Betsy Andreu was especially clumsy). But he acknowledged his overall ruthlessness. "It's a major flaw," he said. "It's a guy who expected to get what he wanted and control every outcome."

Winfrey did not offer a lifeline. There there was no visible catharsis, no hugging it out. If there was an Oprah moment, it came when Winfrey asked Armstrong about his destructive bullying. "Were you a bully?" Winfrey asked.

Armstrong sort of laughed. "Yeah, yeah," he said. "I was a bully."

Winfrey: "Tell me how you were a bully."

Here you expected the interview to veer off into the territory of childhood traumas and long-carried resentments, but it never really went there. Soon it was back to Usada and longtime Armstrong associate, doctor Michele Ferrari. More questions will come in Part II on Friday night.

There were still flashes of resistance. Armstrong did not wish to wander into the tentacles of this story; he tried to keep the controversy to himself. He offered denials. He denied putting extreme pressure on teammate riders to dope. He denied trying to influence cycling's governing agency, the UCI. He was insistent he did not dope when he came back to the sport in 2009 and 2010.

And he said something else here that was intriguing: he said he regretted returning to cycling in 2009, suggesting it had possibly set into motion the chain of events that led him to his professional humiliation, a lifetime ban from competition and the hot light of this hotel suite. And it was possible in that moment, to hear the wheels in Armstrong's brain spinning in the way they used to spin when he fought back and fought back ugly. He wasn't sure if this was totally true, but he suspected it, and he felt comfortable enough to introduce it into his version of his narrative.

He had almost slipped away.

"We wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't come back," he said.

And yet Lance Armstrong was sitting there, in that room, finally giving the kind of answers he never wanted to give. The narrative had run its course. So had the myth. In that chair sat only a man.

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